Propylene is an important basic raw material for synthetic resins such as polypropylene and for petrochemical products, and is used widely such as for automobile bumpers, food containers, films, and medical instruments.
Isopropyl alcohol produced from plant-derived raw materials can be converted to propylene through a dehydration process. Therefore, isopropyl alcohol is a promising carbon-neutral raw material for propylene. Kyoto Protocol called for industrialized nations to reduce their total carbon dioxide emissions from 1990 levels by 5 percent by 2008-2012. Therefore, carbon-neutral propylene is currently extremely important due to its versatility, in view of the global environment.
Bacteria that assimilate plant-derived raw materials and produce isopropyl alcohol are already known. For example, WO 2009/008377 discloses a bacterium that has been modified so as to achieve high production of isopropyl alcohol from glucose as a raw material, and describes that the bacterium is an excellent biocatalyst for industrial production of isopropyl alcohol.
It is known that Escherichia coli cannot assimilate sucrose. However, it would be industrially advantageous if sucrose, which is inexpensive among plant-derived materials, could be utilized.
According to conventional knowledge, the mechanism of sucrose assimilation by microorganisms is roughly classified into two systems, i.e., the sucrose PTS (Phosphoenolpyruvate: Carbohydrate Phosphotransferase System) and the sucrose non-PTS (For example, JP-A No. 2001-346578). The sucrose non-PTS is known to be composed of four factors, i.e., cscB (which incorporates sucrose), cscA (which decomposes sucrose in microorganisms), cscK (which phosphorylates fructose), and cscR (which controls the expressions of cscB, A, and K). Biotechnology Letters, Vol. 27, pp. 1891-1896 (2005) describes that genes of these four factors were introduced into D-lactic acid-producing Escherichia coli using plasmids, thereby producing D-lactic acid from sucrose.
In addition, the sucrose PTS is known to be composed of five factors, i.e., scrA (which incorporates sucrose); scrY (which phosphorylates sucrose); scrB (which decomposes sucrose in microorganisms); scrR (which controls the expressions of scrA, Y, and B), and scrK (which phosphorylates fructose).
When ability that a microorganism does not have should be introduced into the microorganism, introduction of a gene expressing the ability is generally studied. In the case of sucrose assimilation ability, the DNAs of the above factors have sizes of from 900 to 1500 bp, and the total DNA size required for expressing genes of four enzymes (thiolase, CoA transferase, acetoacetate decarboxylase, and isopropyl alcohol dehydrogenase) required for high production of isopropyl alcohol is approximately 4800 bp. In other words, introduction of a DNA having a size of approximately 9300 bp would be necessary in order to impart both the sucrose assimilation ability and the IPA-producing ability to Escherichia coli. 
However, simultaneous introduction thereof into Escherichia coli is extremely difficult since the size of the DNA to be introduced would exceed the upper limit of the DNA size which the plasmid can accommodate. Even if two kinds of plasmid vector were used so as to reduce the DNA size of each plasmid to be 10000 bp or smaller, either or both of the two kinds of plasmid introduced into Escherichia coli would usually be likely to be eliminated during repetitive growth. The Escherichia coli would need to be continuously exposed to an expensive antibiotic substance as a selection marker in order to avoid the above problem, and such necessity is not suitable for industrial production.
Accordingly, it was difficult to simultaneously impart both the ability to assimilate sucrose and the ability to highly produce isopropyl alcohol to Escherichia coli. 
Can. J. Microbiol., Vol. 45, pp. 18-422 (1999) discloses that as a result of introduction of sucrose hydrolase (cscA) alone into Escherichia coli, the Escherichia coli could grow using sucrose as a raw material. However, the article also demonstrates that when cscA gene was highly expressed by a genetic recombination technology, almost all of cscA were present in the cells. Thus, cscA (invertase) works inside the cells rather than outside the cells, and it cannot be expected that cscA decomposes sucrose outside the cells.
An example of material production from sucrose using Escherichia coli, which cannot assimilate sucrose, is production of tryptophan using sucrose as a raw material (for example, JP-A No. 2001-346578). However, in this example, it is demonstrated that introduction of a group of genes including at least cscA, cscB, and cscK is necessary in order to impart the ability to produce amino acids from sucrose to Escherichia coli. 